Juvenile Court and Contemporary Diversion

• Author: George B. Pesta,Andrea M. Lindsey,Daniel P. Mears,Sonja E. Siennick,Thomas G. Blomberg,Joshua J. Kuch,Mark A. Greenwald
• Date: 01 August 2016
• Published date: 01 August 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12223

RESEARCH ARTICLE

JUVENILE COURT AND DIVERSION

Juvenile Court and Contemporary Diversion

Helpful, Harmful, or Both?

Daniel P. Mears

Joshua J. Kuch

Andrea M. Lindsey

Sonja E. Siennick

George B. Pesta

Mark A. Greenwald

Thomas G. Blomberg

Florida State University

Research Summary

The juvenile court was established to help children through the use of punishment and

rehabilitation and, in so doing, “save” them from a life of crime and disadvantage.

Diversion programs and policies emerged in the 1970s as one way to achieve this

goal. Despite concerns about its potential harm, diversion became increasingly popular

in subsequent decades. We examine the logic of a prominent contemporary diversion

effort, civil citation, to illuminate tensions inherent to traditional and contemporary

diversion. Wethen review extant evidence on traditional diversion efforts, examine civil

citation laws, and identify the salience of both traditional and contemporary, police-

centered diversion efforts for youth and the juvenile court. The analysis highlights that

Partial support for developing this article came through a research subcontract from Grant 2014-CK-BX-0018,

awarded by the U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, to the School District of Palm Beach

County. The points of view expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent

the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice, the School District of Palm Beach County, or

the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. We thank Barry Feld and Howard Snyder for helpful guidance

about arrests and referrals to juvenile court. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for guidance in

strengthening the manuscript. Direct correspondence to Daniel P. Mears, Ph.D., College of Criminology and

Criminal Justice, Florida State University, Eppes Hall, 112 South Copeland Street, Tallahassee, FL 32306-1273

(e-mail: dmears@fsu.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12223 C2016 American Society of Criminology 953

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 15 rIssue 3

Research Article Juvenile Court and Diversion

diversion may help children but that it also may harm them. It highlights that the

risk of net-widening for the police and the court is considerable. And it highlights

the importance of, and need for, research on the use and effects of diversion and the

conditions under which it may produce benefits and avoid harms.

Policy Implications

This article recommends a more tempered embrace of diversionand a fuller embrace of

research-guided efforts to achieve the juvenile court’s ideals. Diversion may be effective

under certain conditions, but these conditions need to be identified and then met.

Keywords

juvenile court, juvenile justice, diversion, child-saving

Almost four decades ago, Bullington, Sprowls, Katkin, and Phillips (1978: 71)

argued that “one overwhelmingly clear lesson is to be learned from the history

of juvenile justice in America: namely, that the path to hell is paved with good

intentions. If this lesson is lost on the current generation of reformers, today’s innovations

may well become tomorrow’s abuses.” Their view, which was articulated in response to the

rapid expansion of diversion efforts nationally, was echoed in other reviews and accounts at

the time (Blomberg, 1983; Klein, 1979; McCarthy and Smith, 1986; Needleman, 1981;

Polk, 1984). Collectively, scholarship identified the potential merits of diversion, such as

the opportunity for youth to avoid the stigma of a formal court record and to receive

rehabilitative services that might reduce recidivism. Diversion, too, held the prospect of

reducing court caseloads and of providing punishment and intervention in cases where

youth otherwise might receive little-to-no attention. Set against such potential benefits

were potential harms, such as net-widening, wherein more youth and their families became

subject to court control; increased recidivism; abuse of discretion in placing youth into

diversion programs; and amplification of racial, ethnic, and gender disparities in juvenile

court processing and sanctioning.

In subsequent decades, diversion has become, if anything, more popular. Supportfor it

stems in part from its appeal to two groups. Diversion appeals to proponents of a get-tough

approach to delinquency because it provides a vehicle through which young offenders, even

those who commit minor offenses, can be held accountable. It also appeals to proponents of a

rehabilitative approach because it affords an opportunity to intervene with youth before they

progress to more serious offending. This consensus is unique among juvenile justice reforms;

other policies, such as the transfer of juveniles to adult court, engender divides that tend

to fall along ideological lines (Butts and Mears, 2001; Fagan and Zimring, 2000; Kupchik,

2006; Loeber and Farrington, 2012). Perhaps for this reason, diversion programs and

policies—such as teen or youth courts; drug courts; mentoring; family therapy; community

service; arbitration; and programs that emphasize restorative justice, education, counseling,

954 Criminology & Public Policy